Alabama

Nick Saban speaks to the media after Alabama's first preseason football practice of the 2014 season, Friday, August 01, 2014, at the Thomas-Drew Practice Facility in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Vasha Hunt/vhunt@al.com
(VASHA HUNT)

The NCAA voted in 2012 to allow multi-year scholarships, but didn't require schools to enforce that. Alabama is one of many schools who do offer those scholarships, though.

"I think that the perception out there is that the four-year scholarship is better for the player," Saban said on Tuesday. "If that's the perception, that's OK with me. We certainly do that here because we want our families and people who are involved in our program to feel the utmost security."

But is it really much different than the old model, which was renewing one-year scholarships from year to year?

"When you were on a one-year scholarship, you couldn't just take a guy's scholarship away just to take it away," Saban said. "It had to be something that was sort of university policy and athletic department policy or something that the guy violated to be able to take it away.

"The guy had a one-year scholarship that was automatically renewed for four or five years. Now, even though a guy has a four-year scholarship, he still can have his scholarship taken away for the same violation of the same kind of rules."

Saban said that he and his coaching staff support giving out multi-year scholarships because they want incoming players to feel comfortable, and it's something that they "love to do."

But regardless of the scholarship length, the conditions to be met are still roughly the same.

"But in reality, there's not a whole lot of difference," Saban said. "There's still a lot of responsibility that a player has to do what's right in terms of his part of the bargain, in terms of how he represents himself, his family, the university, the kind of student he is.

"It has nothing to do with athletic ability, and that's true in every sport. I mean, I can't speak for other sports, but..."